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I'm surprised to see HN jumping to support the right of parents to raise children in ideologically-driven information vacuums. Censorship by parents is censors

I'm surprised to see HN jumping to support the right of parents to raise children in ideologically-driven information vacuums. Censorship by parents is censorship, too. Learning to think critically and being presented with information which may challenge your parents' religious beliefs are basic freedom of speech and freedom of information principles. I would call them human rights. Let human beings decide for themselves whether to disregard science, believe in God, believe the Bible is literally true, etc. I'd rather have a little state overreach than fundamentalists whose beliefs have solidified before they were ever even exposed to ideas that didn't fit their parents' version of reality. That's bad for politics, bad for science, and unfair to the children. Everyone has a right to at least be presented with the scientific view of the world. They don't have to believe it, and their parents can certainly offer alternative views at home. But in my mind a child is a person with at least some rights which supersede those of her parents. Education has got to be one of them.

fleitz 13y ago
Given your opposition to ideologically-driven information vacuums I take it you don't support the public school system?
- superuser2 13y ago
  I support biology, chemistry, and physics classes. You have a right to be taught what is known in these areas, how we got there, and what it means about our world. Consider human evolution (bio), carbon dating (bio/chem), origin and expansion of the universe (physics). The history portion of chemistry presented us with the scientific process and the story of how we formulated, experimentally tested, and refined our models of matter, often proving the Church wrong in its blind acceptance of ancient philosophers' conjectures. This is a way of thinking to which every person deserves exposure, and some parents aren't comfortable with it. In physics, we used telescope measurements to calculate the rate of expansion and age of the universe. Results were not consistent with some parents' readings of Genesis. I'll buy brainwashing in subjective areas like history, current events, economics, and literary analysis but not in science. The public school system is problematic, but it at least allows access to books and websites which are screened only for sexuality, not for reality.
  - fleitz 13y ago
    So pot has been scientifically proven to have no medicinal value? I remember them telling me this in science class, so apparently science is full of BS too.
    - superuser2 13y ago
      I remember them telling me this in health class, which was pretty obviously full of shit. Even by the guidelines handed out in English class for evaluating sources, it wasn't the slightest bit credible. We found the teacher on CCAP pleading out to THC possession 15 years ago. My chemistry teacher, introducing organic chemistry, told us about an O-Chem final in college and how "no amount of mind-altering substances in the world could make that okay. Believe me, I tried." We discussed alcohol literacy - understanding "proof" in chemical terms. We also did the equations for freebasing cocaine, and talked (in broad strokes) about making meth.
  - jimzvz 13y ago
    I'll buy brainwashing in subjective areas like history, current events, economics, and literary analysis but not in science. Wow. I think the most important thing to teach children is to be open to ideas. The universe may be billions of years old or a couple of seconds old with initial conditions that indicate a different history. Humans may be intelligent actors in a computer simulation equivalent in some other universe that we have no way of perceiving. We may all just exist in the imagination of some being we could never understand. Science is just a tool to make sense of what we can but it is not the be all and end all. If anyone is going to brainwash my kids, I would hope that it is me and not some government with their own objectives and emergent quirks. An accurate as possible representation of history, current events, philosophy and economics is just as important as a solid introduction to the state of scientific discoveries/methods/theories is to a young mind.
    - superuser2 13y ago
      I was conceding to fleitz that there's room in those subject areas for a particular interpretation to be pushed over others. I had a great and very academic APUSH teacher with a PhD and we often joked about the hilariously pro-America bias in our textbook. These things should still be taught, objectively and well like you say, but in these areas I wouldn't dismiss outright the claim that the state often has a bias. My physics and chemistry teachers were very clear that they were teaching us a process and where it's led us for now, not the be all end all truth. We laughed at ancient chemistry (fire comes from phlogiston, an element with sometimes negative mass) and then discussed the possibility that what we're taught now could be just as hilarious in another hundred years. My physics teacher was well-versed in the current frontiers of particle physics and encouraged us to understand uncertainty. The lesson wasn't "the universe is x years old," the lesson was "hey look, we can use these measurements and some provably sound mathematical tools to come up with a number which, if certain pretty good assumptions hold true, is the age of the universe. If someone disproves the assumptions or the data, then our number is wrong, but that's really exciting because it will lead us to new understanding." I guess what I'm really supporting here is the scientific mindset. Some people who value faith feel very threatened by that, don't want their children going anywhere near it, and hold them out of school. I think the children deserve to learn about it anyway, and decide on their own what to accept.
rickjames28 13y ago
You're actually surprised to see HN folks coming to the defense of parents/individual rights and against statist intervention into every aspect of a person's life? I think it's pretty clear that you leftists believe that the state really "owns" the children. That's a sad thing to see here on HN.
- yk 13y ago
  What about the rights of the children? The parents do not own them either, and society has sometimes a duty to protect children from their parents.
- superuser2 13y ago
  And I think it's pretty clear that you libertarians believe you own your children. We're coming at this from extremely different perspectives, but realize that the thought that parents own their children is as disgusting to me as the thought of the state owning children is to you. To (some of) us, children are people. They are not owned. They have rights. The state is the only available instrument to protect the rights of the weak against the strong.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
- wonderzombie 13y ago
  You'll get a lot more out of a discussion if you don't argue with a caricature of your interlocutor's opinions. I'd love to go on about about libertarian ties to right-wing, Christianist movements, which themselves are inextricable from white supremacy and a hostility towards women, but it's unfair to assume that you, personally, hold any such beliefs. So let's talk about children, and the state. The state believes that parents do not own their children. This is relatively uncontroversial, if you want somebody to be able to protect children from the depredations of shitty parents. Kids are fragile and easily influenced, and they can't make adult decisions. They're defenseless, particularly against their parents. Generally education is considered critical to a child's welfare, and for good reason. Basic literacy and arithmetic are important if you're to have citizenry capable of participating in a democracy. Put it all together and perhaps you see why a society might be just a wee bit concerned about how parents treat their children, including whether and how they educate them.
jimzvz 13y ago
I'd rather have a little state overreach than fundamentalists whose beliefs have solidified before they were ever even exposed to ideas that didn't fit their parents' version of reality. And I wouldn't.
ef4 13y ago
You're completely misunderstanding the motivation for many homeschoolers like myself. I am an atheist and an engineer. My local homeschooling groups have literally hundreds of families like mine, in which one or both parents have advanced degrees. We see the writing on the wall. The public schools -- even the "good" ones -- are hopelessly stuck training children for an economic model that is already dead. Sending your kids to the typical school is actively harming their economic future. Everything about school is built around the factory model. It is precisely the opposite of how to train someone for success in the 21st century, where the only way to win is to do things for which there are no simple instructions. I'm going to give my kid a better scientific education than the public schools have ever provided. In fact, I dispute that they have ever really done so. They teach facts that were discovered by science, but they don't actually teach science. If they did, they would soon collapse under the weight of their own contradictions: "why are we studying this?" "because it will help you later." "show me the evidence." "go to the principal's office." Science is deeply anti-authoritarian. It doesn't matter who you are, it matters whether you have better evidence and better arguments. School actively opposes that kind of thinking.
- superuser2 13y ago
  I support homeschoolers like you. I know several kids who are homeschooled under similar philosophies, and they're the smartest people I've ever met. They take AP and college classes early, sometimes even as young teens, and are encouraged to do independent reading and think for themselves. The article in question, though, is about parents who kept their children out of school over religious objections to the curriculum. That, I oppose vehemently.
  - ef4 13y ago
    Then you should oppose Germany's law, because it would take my kid away too. It makes no distinction. It doesn't set an educational standard -- it simply demands obedience.
    - superuser2 13y ago
      Then Germany's law is bad and needs revision to set an educational standard instead of demanding obedience. Parents still don't have a right to isolate their children from information they don't like.
einhverfr 13y ago
> Censorship by parents is censorship, too. Learning to think critically and being presented with information which may challenge your parents' religious beliefs are basic freedom of speech and freedom of information principles. I would call them human rights. I totally disagree with you here. The problem is that the state tends to create information vacuums that are harder to detect and compensate for. > Let human beings decide for themselves whether to disregard science, believe in God, believe the Bible is literally true, etc. Does that go for "let humans decide for themselves whether to accept homosexuality as normal for some people?" If so, would you agree that the state must remain neutral on that issue? And if so, then would you agree that expressing hostility to gay rights can never be harassment or bullying in the eyes of the state? Now if you aren't prepared to go there, then isn't the argument over who gets to make these decisions, whether culture must arise from the grass roots of a culture or whether it should be imposed by an arguably benevolant state? I would argue that if anything a vacuum that goes against the prevailing attitudes is easier for people to question as they grow up. A vacuum which does nothing but reinforce prevailing cultural attitudes is much harder to rethink. It is easier for someone to question whether their parents were right about gay rights in the current climate if their parents were opposed than it is to question the state, when nobody else does.
- superuser2 13y ago
  >Does that go for "let humans decide for themselves whether to accept homosexuality as normal for some people?" If so, would you agree that the state must remain neutral on that issue? And if so, then would you agree that expressing hostility to gay rights can never be harassment or bullying in the eyes of the state? The issue is not with taking a position, it's with suppressing opposition to that position. My school encouraged tolerance for the LGBT community in its promotion of diversity, but I could stand up in a school-sponsored Debate extracurricular and oppose gay marriage. I could write a persuasive paper against gay marriage and submit it to my English teacher. I could campaign against gay rights in the Republican club. If I were the editor, I could run a front-page school newspaper article opposing the administration's decision. I'd probably lose a lot of friends that way, but the school couldn't stop or punish me. This is one of the strengths of public education. Nobody, however, gets to bully or harass individuals for any reason, including their homosexuality. As with parents and children, your rights end and the other person's rights begin.

fleitz 13y ago

Given your opposition to ideologically-driven information vacuums I take it you don't support the public school system?

superuser2 13y ago
I support biology, chemistry, and physics classes. You have a right to be taught what is known in these areas, how we got there, and what it means about our world. Consider human evolution (bio), carbon dating (bio/chem), origin and expansion of the universe (physics). The history portion of chemistry presented us with the scientific process and the story of how we formulated, experimentally tested, and refined our models of matter, often proving the Church wrong in its blind acceptance of ancient philosophers' conjectures. This is a way of thinking to which every person deserves exposure, and some parents aren't comfortable with it. In physics, we used telescope measurements to calculate the rate of expansion and age of the universe. Results were not consistent with some parents' readings of Genesis. I'll buy brainwashing in subjective areas like history, current events, economics, and literary analysis but not in science. The public school system is problematic, but it at least allows access to books and websites which are screened only for sexuality, not for reality.
- fleitz 13y ago
  So pot has been scientifically proven to have no medicinal value? I remember them telling me this in science class, so apparently science is full of BS too.
  - superuser2 13y ago
    I remember them telling me this in health class, which was pretty obviously full of shit. Even by the guidelines handed out in English class for evaluating sources, it wasn't the slightest bit credible. We found the teacher on CCAP pleading out to THC possession 15 years ago. My chemistry teacher, introducing organic chemistry, told us about an O-Chem final in college and how "no amount of mind-altering substances in the world could make that okay. Believe me, I tried." We discussed alcohol literacy - understanding "proof" in chemical terms. We also did the equations for freebasing cocaine, and talked (in broad strokes) about making meth.
- jimzvz 13y ago
  I'll buy brainwashing in subjective areas like history, current events, economics, and literary analysis but not in science. Wow. I think the most important thing to teach children is to be open to ideas. The universe may be billions of years old or a couple of seconds old with initial conditions that indicate a different history. Humans may be intelligent actors in a computer simulation equivalent in some other universe that we have no way of perceiving. We may all just exist in the imagination of some being we could never understand. Science is just a tool to make sense of what we can but it is not the be all and end all. If anyone is going to brainwash my kids, I would hope that it is me and not some government with their own objectives and emergent quirks. An accurate as possible representation of history, current events, philosophy and economics is just as important as a solid introduction to the state of scientific discoveries/methods/theories is to a young mind.
  - superuser2 13y ago
    I was conceding to fleitz that there's room in those subject areas for a particular interpretation to be pushed over others. I had a great and very academic APUSH teacher with a PhD and we often joked about the hilariously pro-America bias in our textbook. These things should still be taught, objectively and well like you say, but in these areas I wouldn't dismiss outright the claim that the state often has a bias. My physics and chemistry teachers were very clear that they were teaching us a process and where it's led us for now, not the be all end all truth. We laughed at ancient chemistry (fire comes from phlogiston, an element with sometimes negative mass) and then discussed the possibility that what we're taught now could be just as hilarious in another hundred years. My physics teacher was well-versed in the current frontiers of particle physics and encouraged us to understand uncertainty. The lesson wasn't "the universe is x years old," the lesson was "hey look, we can use these measurements and some provably sound mathematical tools to come up with a number which, if certain pretty good assumptions hold true, is the age of the universe. If someone disproves the assumptions or the data, then our number is wrong, but that's really exciting because it will lead us to new understanding." I guess what I'm really supporting here is the scientific mindset. Some people who value faith feel very threatened by that, don't want their children going anywhere near it, and hold them out of school. I think the children deserve to learn about it anyway, and decide on their own what to accept.

rickjames28 13y ago

You're actually surprised to see HN folks coming to the defense of parents/individual rights and against statist intervention into every aspect of a person's life? I think it's pretty clear that you leftists believe that the state really "owns" the children. That's a sad thing to see here on HN.

yk 13y ago
What about the rights of the children? The parents do not own them either, and society has sometimes a duty to protect children from their parents.
superuser2 13y ago
And I think it's pretty clear that you libertarians believe you own your children. We're coming at this from extremely different perspectives, but realize that the thought that parents own their children is as disgusting to me as the thought of the state owning children is to you. To (some of) us, children are people. They are not owned. They have rights. The state is the only available instrument to protect the rights of the weak against the strong.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
wonderzombie 13y ago
You'll get a lot more out of a discussion if you don't argue with a caricature of your interlocutor's opinions. I'd love to go on about about libertarian ties to right-wing, Christianist movements, which themselves are inextricable from white supremacy and a hostility towards women, but it's unfair to assume that you, personally, hold any such beliefs. So let's talk about children, and the state. The state believes that parents do not own their children. This is relatively uncontroversial, if you want somebody to be able to protect children from the depredations of shitty parents. Kids are fragile and easily influenced, and they can't make adult decisions. They're defenseless, particularly against their parents. Generally education is considered critical to a child's welfare, and for good reason. Basic literacy and arithmetic are important if you're to have citizenry capable of participating in a democracy. Put it all together and perhaps you see why a society might be just a wee bit concerned about how parents treat their children, including whether and how they educate them.

jimzvz 13y ago

I'd rather have a little state overreach than fundamentalists whose beliefs have solidified before they were ever even exposed to ideas that didn't fit their parents' version of reality. And I wouldn't.

ef4 13y ago

You're completely misunderstanding the motivation for many homeschoolers like myself. I am an atheist and an engineer. My local homeschooling groups have literally hundreds of families like mine, in which one or both parents have advanced degrees. We see the writing on the wall. The public schools -- even the "good" ones -- are hopelessly stuck training children for an economic model that is already dead. Sending your kids to the typical school is actively harming their economic future. Everything about school is built around the factory model. It is precisely the opposite of how to train someone for success in the 21st century, where the only way to win is to do things for which there are no simple instructions. I'm going to give my kid a better scientific education than the public schools have ever provided. In fact, I dispute that they have ever really done so. They teach facts that were discovered by science, but they don't actually teach science. If they did, they would soon collapse under the weight of their own contradictions: "why are we studying this?" "because it will help you later." "show me the evidence." "go to the principal's office." Science is deeply anti-authoritarian. It doesn't matter who you are, it matters whether you have better evidence and better arguments. School actively opposes that kind of thinking.

superuser2 13y ago
I support homeschoolers like you. I know several kids who are homeschooled under similar philosophies, and they're the smartest people I've ever met. They take AP and college classes early, sometimes even as young teens, and are encouraged to do independent reading and think for themselves. The article in question, though, is about parents who kept their children out of school over religious objections to the curriculum. That, I oppose vehemently.
- ef4 13y ago
  Then you should oppose Germany's law, because it would take my kid away too. It makes no distinction. It doesn't set an educational standard -- it simply demands obedience.
  - superuser2 13y ago
    Then Germany's law is bad and needs revision to set an educational standard instead of demanding obedience. Parents still don't have a right to isolate their children from information they don't like.

einhverfr 13y ago

> Censorship by parents is censorship, too. Learning to think critically and being presented with information which may challenge your parents' religious beliefs are basic freedom of speech and freedom of information principles. I would call them human rights. I totally disagree with you here. The problem is that the state tends to create information vacuums that are harder to detect and compensate for. > Let human beings decide for themselves whether to disregard science, believe in God, believe the Bible is literally true, etc. Does that go for "let humans decide for themselves whether to accept homosexuality as normal for some people?" If so, would you agree that the state must remain neutral on that issue? And if so, then would you agree that expressing hostility to gay rights can never be harassment or bullying in the eyes of the state? Now if you aren't prepared to go there, then isn't the argument over who gets to make these decisions, whether culture must arise from the grass roots of a culture or whether it should be imposed by an arguably benevolant state? I would argue that if anything a vacuum that goes against the prevailing attitudes is easier for people to question as they grow up. A vacuum which does nothing but reinforce prevailing cultural attitudes is much harder to rethink. It is easier for someone to question whether their parents were right about gay rights in the current climate if their parents were opposed than it is to question the state, when nobody else does.

superuser2 13y ago
>Does that go for "let humans decide for themselves whether to accept homosexuality as normal for some people?" If so, would you agree that the state must remain neutral on that issue? And if so, then would you agree that expressing hostility to gay rights can never be harassment or bullying in the eyes of the state? The issue is not with taking a position, it's with suppressing opposition to that position. My school encouraged tolerance for the LGBT community in its promotion of diversity, but I could stand up in a school-sponsored Debate extracurricular and oppose gay marriage. I could write a persuasive paper against gay marriage and submit it to my English teacher. I could campaign against gay rights in the Republican club. If I were the editor, I could run a front-page school newspaper article opposing the administration's decision. I'd probably lose a lot of friends that way, but the school couldn't stop or punish me. This is one of the strengths of public education. Nobody, however, gets to bully or harass individuals for any reason, including their homosexuality. As with parents and children, your rights end and the other person's rights begin.